Native American Cultures

Native American tribes of the North American continent and the peoples of
the Subarctic and Arctic have a long and rich history. Archaeologists,
scientists who study past civilizations, believe that people have lived in
North America from about 13,000
B.C.E.
Our knowledge of Native American cultures begins with the first European
contact in the tenth century
C.E.
between the Vikings and the Arctic Inuit, or Eskimo peoples, but becomes
much more detailed in the early 1500s and 1600s when first the Spanish,
then the French, the British, and the Dutch, began arriving on the shores
of the continent. The Europeans set up trading centers from which our
first documentation of Native American customs and costumes came. Traders
would write about the native people they met and describe their clothing
and lifestyles. More information came from missionaries who came to
convert the natives to Christianity, and from white settlers who began
establishing farms and towns across the continent.

The information gathered about Native Americans by Europeans is
incomplete, however. Without a written language of their own, Native
Americans offered oral histories of their peoples and practiced methods of
producing garments, housing, weapons, and other necessities that had been
passed on by their ancestors for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
These sources paint a picture
of Native American life that differs greatly from one region of the
continent to the next. Yet strikingly similar among natives is the common
belief that humans must try to live in balance with their natural world,
an idea that was quite foreign to whites.

Grouping native peoples by region

More than three hundred different tribes lived across North America.
Each tribe had distinct cultures, clothing styles, social organization,
and language dialects. Because similarities did exist between tribes
living in similar regions, anthropologists, those who study cultures,
often group tribes into regional categories. The regions most
concentrated on are: the Southeast, the Northeast, the Plains, the
Southwest, the Great Basin, the Plateau, California, the Northwest, the
Subarctic, and the Arctic. The tribes of the Southeast lived in the
modern-day states of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Virginia, North and South Carolina, and parts of Texas. These tribes
included the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Potomac, and Powhatan, among
many others. The tribes of the Northeast lived in parts of Ontario and
Quebec in Canada and in the modern-day states of Maine, Vermont, New
Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, and
included the Sauk, Fox, Shawnee, and the Potawatomi tribes, among
others. The Plains tribes ranged over the Great Plains of North America,
an area stretching from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky
Mountains in the west and from Texas in the south into Canada in the
north. Plains Indians included the Blackfoot, Crow, Dakota Sioux, Kiowa,
Pawnee, and the Omaha, among others. The tribes of the Southwest lived
in the deserts of modern-day Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.
Peoples of the Southwest were the Apache, Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo,
among others. The Great Basin lay between the Rocky Mountains and the
Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the present-day states of Colorado, Utah,
and Nevada. Tribes of the Great Basin included the Shoshone, Northern
and Southern Paiute, and Ute, among others. The Plateau runs from
British Colombia, Canada, south to Washington and Oregon states between
the Rocky Mountains and the Cascades. The Cayuse, Nez Perce, Palouse,
and Yakima tribes lived on the Plateau. The tribes of California lived
within the area now considered the state of California and included the
Hupa, Pomo, Mojave, and Yuma tribes, among others. The tribes of the
Northwest lived along the Pacific
Northwest coast from the present-day state of Oregon in the south to
Alaska in the north. The Northwest tribes included the Chinook, Haida,
and Quinault, among others. The Subarctic is a region that includes the
interior of Canada and Alaska. The Beaver, Chipewyan, Kolchan, and
Mississauga tribes, among others, lived in the Subarctic. The Arctic is
the coldest region and includes the land from Aleutian Island to
Greenland. Eskimos have lived for thousands of years in the Arctic.
Unlike the Native Americans living further south, the Eskimos are one
people, not a group of separate tribes. Eskimos are organized into many
different social and political groups, but they speak the same language
and share the same culture.

Native American diversity

All parts of Native American life were affected by the climate and
geography in which the Native Americans lived. The weather, the
fertility of the soil, access to water, and the height of mountains all
contributed to how a particular Indian tribe organized its social and
political systems. Each was unique. Tribes lived by farming, fishing,
hunting, gathering, and later, trading, depending on their particular
region and amount of contact with others. The Arapaho of the Plains, for
example, were nomads and built no permanent settlements. However, other
tribes joined together to form larger, stronger groups. The Iroquois
confederacy of the Northeast united six tribes to protect each other
from war and invasion. Tribes and confederacies developed systems of
social status, or rank, and their clothing and adornment reflected these
systems. Generally, the higher a person's status was within the
tribe, the more ornate their costume.

Native American tribes and Arctic peoples developed rich cultures that
respected the land around them. For thousands of years Native Americans
prospered on the North American continent, but the arrival of white
Europeans changed everything. The changes to Native American life were
devastating. Huge numbers of natives died from diseases introduced by
Europeans. Between 1769 and 1869 diseases introduced by European
traders, missionaries, and settlers decreased the native population of
California from three hundred thousand to twenty thousand. In addition,
Europeans' outlook on life was fundamentally different from that
of Native Americans.

Europeans did not consider the balance of the natural world as
carefully as did Native Americans and often exploited and pillaged the
land rather than nourishing or sustaining it. Europeans' desire
for goods from the North American continent created a system of trade
that soon changed Native American lives forever. European traders
encouraged the near destruction of many animals for their hides,
including the beaver and the buffalo, leaving natives without the
animals they once depended on for survival. Moreover, Native Americans
could not continue to live in the same places. White settlers began
building farms, ranches, and towns on land used by Native Americans.
Whites pushed Indians off their land until, in the mid-1800s, the U.S.
government demanded that all Native Americans live on reservations, land
designated for Indian use. Decades of struggle between Native Americans
and whites ensued. The result was the near destruction of Native
American life and culture by the early twentieth century.

Native Americans today live very differently from their ancestors, but
many continue to appreciate the traditions of their diverse
ancestry. Although Native Americans no longer dress daily in the ways
of their ancestors, they do continue to wear traditional clothing for
ceremonial purposes.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Dubin, Lois Sherr.
North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment: From Prehistory to the
Present.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.